Tom Funk's Blog, page 6

Getting Noticed In a Noisy World

How can a small- to medium-sized business compete for "share of mind" of its target market -- and reach prospects amid the din of competing messages?

And nowadays, with the increasing importance of external links to a website's Page Rank, how can such sites attract quality links to their stuff?

The answer for one New York-based tool company seems to be: Just do your thing, specialize in a niche that attracts passionate followers, commit yourself to uniqueness and high quality -- and the...

Google Website Optimizer: So Easy an English Major Can Do It

[image error]Google Website Optimizer can change your life. Or at least your ecommerce business! Imagine all the things you want to know about your online business:

Do I increase orders with a bigger Add to Cart button?
Does a blonde model move more product than a brunette?
Does a free shipping offer pay for itself? *

We just launched a cool Google Website Optimizer A/B test on Beau Ties of Vermont, a longtime customer of ours whom we recently helped re-launch on the CommerceV3 platform.

The test r...

Google Will Let Your Visitors Opt-Out of Being Tracked by Google Analytics

Hey, web merchant! How much do you trust your Google Analytics numbers?

Hopefully, plenty. You tag all your advertising links, and you've invested in enough due-diligence and debugging, so you're confident your data is clean and reliable. That's important, because analytics are how you assess and run your online business.

However, if you use Google Analytics (and the tool now owns a jaw-dropping estimated 80% share of the analytics market), your numbers are about to get less reliable.

That's ...

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Launches New B2B Site: BusinessCoffeeExpress.com

[image error]Congratulations to our friend Reid Greenberg and his caffeine-amped team at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters business-to-business division.

"As you are certainly aware, good coffee is vital to a happy workplace!" says Reid, who is B2B Ecommerce Marketing Manager at GMCR. "Coffee jump starts the day and fuels creativity – no matter how many people you have on staff."

"With this in mind, we’re proud to announce the launch of our newest family of sites; www.BusinessCoffeeExpress.com!"
...

Free Webinar: "Get on the Shopping Engines with CV3 & SingleFeed"

We have an exciting announcement for you today! Timberline Interactive and Singlefeed will be hosting a FREE WEBINAR this week:



"Get on the Shopping Engines with CV3 & SingleFeed"



Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:00 am - 12:00 pm PDT



Looking for another online revenue source? Google Shopping, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and other Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) can drive more shoppers to your site. Millions use these platforms -- every month a stunning one-third of the US internet audience c...

Timberline Email Energetics - Your Future Inbox

Email is continuously changing and there are yet again some new things on the horizon. Chad White, Research Director at Smith-Harmon, has written a great article entitled The Inbox of the Not-So-Distant Future. Some of the topics he discusses are social media in the inbox, Targets new scannable barcodes sent in emails, video in email and other relevant topics. Its definitely an ever shifting world we live in on the web.

Predictions of Deep Mud Delight Off-Roading Entrepreneur

[image error]The multiple big snowfalls that hit most of the U.S. this winter were a boon for ski and snowboard enthusiasts, as well as the industries affiliated with those sports. And when snow melts? Those record winter snowfalls will mostly likely yield record mud this spring.

That may be a bummer for many folks, but it's a blessing for off road enthusiasts, including Jeep Wrangler parts supplier Live Offroad.

Spring showers bring on May flowers, so the saying goes. So too do snow covered...

Timberline Email Energetics - Yahoo Shortcuts

Doing some email blog reading the other day I got lead down a path that was unintended but found out something very interesting. The interesting tidbit was about Yahoo Shortcuts. Yahoo Shortcuts is intended to add value to the emails in people’s yahoo inboxes but for email marketers and business who are trying to get the ultimate amount of clicks it can have just the opposite effect. I have noticed Yahoo underlines Phone numbers and dates before but hadn’t noticed this.

What it does is ...

Timberline Email Energetics - Hotmail in Firefox

Recently I read an article by Smith-Harmon entitled "Majority of Retailers Fail Hotmail-Firefox Rendering Test". I was immediately intrigued. So, I went to go check some of the emails I send out and sure enough I saw a few extra spaces that I had not planned on in those emails. Very subtle differences but something I wanted to fix as I like to be consistent in all email clients. There can be more obvious errors too and in the Smith-Harmon Press Release they explore this more in depth.

T...

Tom Funk to Speak at Australia's 2010 Online Retailer Conference & Expo

We're excited to share the news that we're participating in our first-ever international conference, the Online Retailer Conference & Expo in Sydney, Australia, June 6 - 10, 2010.

Tom Funk will be a featured speaker in the Search and Email Marketing track. He may also participate in a panel discussion or offer live site critiques.

Conference organizer National Media made a big splash when it launched the Online Retailer conference series just last year: "As the first major business f...